Sonoma Academy Summer Practice

View photo gallery of the practice HERE

Watch the interview of Sonoma Academy athletes HERE

We visited Sonoma Academy's summer practice held at Spring Lake Regional Park. The team ran on the trails at the park and finished the run with hill repeats. Sonoma Academy is located in Santa Rosa, California. They compete in the CIF Division 5 North Coast Section and last year the girl's team finished fifth at the California State Meet.

Coach Puppione shares the information about the program:

During the summer, how often does the team meet?

During the summer we meet five days a week, Monday through Thursday in the evenings and Saturday mornings.

The schedule is intentional. We want to create enough consistency to build fitness, habits, and relationships, but we also want our athletes to have time for family, vacations, summer jobs, camps, and all the other experiences that make this season special. Summer running should add to a young person's life, not consume it.

We also make a point of moving around. Every day has a different meeting location. One day we're at Howarth Park, another at Spring Lake, another on the Santa Rosa Creek Trail, another on trails overlooking the coast. We are incredibly fortunate to live in Sonoma County where there is no shortage of beautiful places to run, and we want our athletes to experience that.

Running is hard. Cross country asks a lot of you. But we also believe running should be joyful. It should be an adventure. It should help young people develop a relationship with movement and with the outdoors that lasts long after their competitive careers are over.

One of the things we talk about often is staying open to possibility, to challenge, to growth, to wonder. Running through redwoods, around lakes, across vineyards, along the coast, and through our local trail systems reminds us that there is a big world beyond splits and stopwatches.

The variety of terrain serves a practical purpose as well. Different surfaces and elevations make our athletes more adaptable, more resilient, and ultimately more prepared for the demands of cross country racing. But beyond the physiological benefits, changing locations helps keep the experience fresh and engaging. Every run becomes a chance to discover something new.

Summer is where the foundation for the season is built, but we don't believe that foundation is built through mileage alone. It's built through consistency, connection, shared experiences, and learning to enjoy the process.

That's one of the reasons we call ourselves a tribe. These runs are not simply workouts. They're opportunities to spend time together, tell stories, support one another, and strengthen the bonds that will carry us through the challenges of the season ahead.

By the time we arrive at the starting line in the fall, we're not just a collection of runners. We're a group of people who have spent an entire summer building something together.

What are some special summer activities?

We have quickly developed a few summer traditions, and while they are a lot of fun, they're also an important part of how we build our culture.

Summer is a formative time for our athletes. It's where fitness begins to develop, but more importantly, it's where relationships develop. The memories our athletes carry with them years later are rarely the workouts. They're the shared experiences, the conversations, the adventures, and the moments of connection.

We try to create as many of those opportunities as we can.

Sometimes it's as simple as popsicles or watermelon after a warm evening run. Those small moments give athletes a chance to linger, laugh, and spend time together. They remind us that while we take what we do seriously, we don't have to take ourselves too seriously.

One of our favorite traditions is our breakfast long runs with our friends from Maria Carrillo and Windsor. A few Saturdays each summer we'll finish a long run and the coaches fire up the flat-top grills right at the trailhead. Pancakes, eggs, sausage, fruit, juice, you name it. Parents contribute, athletes eat like distance runners tend to eat, and everyone spends time together.

On the surface it looks like breakfast. In reality it's community.

We want our athletes to see that this sport is bigger than school colors and rivals. Some of the friendships they develop through running will last much longer than their high school careers, and these gatherings help reinforce that idea.

We also organize a couple of destination long runs each summer. Point Reyes is the favorite. When I was coaching at UC Davis, this is where we would hold our preseason training camp, so I have many fond memories from those years, and now we create new ones with SAXC. There is something special about being out on the trails together, surrounded by the beauty of the California coast, sharing an experience that feels bigger than a normal practice.

We do that run alongside Maria Carrillo, and it is one of the highlights of the summer. Afterward, families put together an enormous lunch spread and everyone stays to eat, relax, and enjoy being together.

Those days embody a lot of what we believe as a program. Running can be challenging and demanding, but it can also be joyful, adventurous, and deeply communal.

We also have a group of athletes who attend summer running camp each year. This summer we'll have athletes heading to the Runners Workshop near Yosemite.

That one is especially meaningful to me because I attended that same camp as a high school athlete. Later, when I started coaching in the late 1990s, it became one of the first camps I brought athletes to. There is something special about seeing today's athletes experience many of the same things that inspired me decades ago.

More than anything, camp gives athletes a chance to immerse themselves in the sport, learn from other runners and coaches, and deepen their connection to the running community.

At the end of the day, all of these traditions serve the same purpose. They help us build the tribe.

We believe that great teams are built through shared experiences. The miles matter. The workouts matter. But the laughter after the run, the breakfast around the grill, the conversations on a trail overlooking the ocean, and the friendships formed during those moments matter too.

Summer is where we build fitness, but it's also where we build belonging. And in our experience, the strongest teams are usually the ones that have both.

How do you build team culture?

We build culture by being intentional about what we value and then holding ourselves accountable to living those values every day.

For us, culture isn't something separate from performance. Culture is the foundation upon which performance is built.

We talk a lot about High Expectations, High Support, and Relentless Pursuit. We believe young people are capable of far more than they often realize, and part of our job is helping them discover that for themselves. We challenge them to step toward that possibility, but we make sure they know they never have to make that journey alone.

We believe in Strength in the Pack. We believe the Team Comes First. We believe everybody matters. The fastest runner on the team and the newest runner on the team are equally important members of the group.

We call ourselves a tribe because a tribe is more than a collection of individuals wearing the same uniform. A tribe shares responsibility. A tribe takes care of its people. A tribe understands that everyone has something to contribute and that everyone belongs. We want our athletes to know they are part of something bigger than themselves and that they have an obligation to leave that thing better than they found it.

We challenge our athletes to give Perfect Effort. Not perfect results, not perfect performances, but the best version of themselves on that day. We ask them to accomplish the purpose of the day, whether that's a championship race, a recovery run, encouraging a teammate, or simply showing up when showing up is hard.

We talk often about being someone people can count on. To me, that's one of the highest compliments a person can receive. Be reliable. Be present. Keep your word. Take care of your teammates. Bring something to the fire instead of simply standing next to it.

Most of all, we try to create an environment where kids feel like they belong. We want them to know they are valued not because of what they can do for the team, but because they are part of the team. Once people feel seen, supported, and connected to something bigger than themselves, they begin to take ownership of the culture.

At that point, the culture no longer belongs to the coaches.

It belongs to the tribe.

What are some events that the team is looking forward to in the fall?

Like most teams, there are certainly races we're excited about.

We often talk about November. We want to be at our very best when it matters most. League Championships, Section Championships, and ultimately the State Championships are important goals for our athletes.

In our first two years at Sonoma Academy, both our boys and girls programs have earned trips to the State Meet, and we're proud of that. But what excites me most is that our athletes have learned to think beyond simply qualifying. They want to compete. They want to test themselves against the best. They want to discover what is possible when preparation meets opportunity.

That's one of the beautiful things about cross country. November rewards the work that began months earlier.

We are also fortunate to have some terrific invitationals on our schedule. The Viking Opener at Spring Lake is one of our favorites. It's a local race with a rich tradition, put on by our friends at Montgomery, and it's often the first opportunity for our athletes to see where they are after a summer of training. There's an energy and excitement to that day that makes it special every year.

Another highlight is the Rough Rider Invitational at Woodward Park in Clovis. That trip is becoming something of a tradition for us. We pile into school vans in the morning, make the drive down to the Central Valley, and spend the day competing on the same course that will host the State Championships a few weeks later.

It's a chance to challenge ourselves against outstanding competition, learn from the experience, and begin imagining what might be possible later in the season. Then we cool down, pile back into the vans, and start the long drive home, which usually features an In-N-Out stop somewhere along the way. Those are the kinds of days athletes remember years later.

But honestly, some of the things our athletes look forward to most aren't races at all.

One of our favorites is our annual Photo Scavenger Hunt Run. I keep the date for this a secret, so when we reveal it to the team on the day, there is a lot of excitement. Athletes are divided into teams and given a list of clues, locations, and challenges spread throughout the community. Along the way they earn points by completing tasks, taking photos, creating videos, and finding increasingly ridiculous ways to be creative.

We've had athletes recreate famous album covers, film music videos, convince complete strangers to cheer for SAXC, and stage elaborate scenes that somehow make perfect sense to teenagers and almost none to adults. By the end of the day, we're left with hundreds of photos and videos that become part of the story of that season.

It sounds silly (and it is), but it also reflects something we believe deeply. Running should be hard, but it should also be joyful. Some of the strongest bonds are built through shared laughter.

Another tradition that means a great deal to our program is our Uniform Ceremony as we enter the championship phase of the season.

We intentionally wait until the races matter most before introducing our championship uniforms. But the ceremony isn't really about the uniforms. It's about the people who helped us get there.

Each athlete is asked to choose a teammate to present a uniform to and share why they selected that person. What emerges is one of the most powerful moments of our season.

The athletes rarely talk about times, places, or results. Instead, they talk about kindness, courage, consistency, encouragement, sacrifice, and trust. They talk about teammates who showed up. They talk about people they can count on.

In many ways, the ceremony brings our mission to life. It reminds us that success is never the work of one athlete alone. Every great performance is built upon countless acts of support, accountability, and belief.

It reinforces one of our core values: Strength in the Pack. We want our athletes to understand that they are responsible not only for their own growth, but also for helping those around them become their best selves.

By the end of the ceremony, athletes often discover that their impact on the team extends far beyond running. The uniforms become a symbol of something larger. It is about a tribe that has spent months building, supporting, and investing in one another.

That's why it remains one of the most meaningful traditions we have.

Ultimately, that's what we look forward to each fall.

Certainly the races. Certainly the championships. Certainly the opportunity to compete at the highest level we can. But also the moments in between. The van rides. The conversations. The traditions. The challenges. The laughter. The opportunities to discover who we are and who we can become.

We want our athletes to run well in November. We talk about that often. But we also want them to look back years from now and remember that they were part of something special. We want them to know that they belonged to a tribe, that they built something together, and that the experience changed them in ways that extended far beyond running.

Those are the moments we look forward to most.